Kremlin Rising by Peter Baker

Author:Peter Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2005-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE AMERICANS were relentlessly moving to war. Russia had leaned on Saddam Hussein to accept new U.N. weapons inspections and signed on to a new Security Council resolution warning Iraq to come clean on any hidden arms program. In a fit of pique, Hussein’s government then canceled Lukoil’s contract to develop the West Qurna oil fields, a self-defeating move for Baghdad that only eliminated the most compelling economic incentive Russia had for sticking by the current Iraqi regime. It soon became clear that the inspections would do nothing to deter Bush. Putin sent his foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, to New York for the February 5 Security Council session where Colin Powell would unveil U.S. evidence of Iraqi duplicity and clandestine weapons of mass destruction. Ivanov decided the substance of Powell’s presentation was meaningless. “It became clear to us that the United States had already made the decision to launch a military operation,” Ivanov told us during a later interview at the Kremlin. Ivanov confronted Powell. “I told him why these arguments seemed unpersuasive to me.” Powell didn’t answer. Ivanov took that to mean his American counterpart agreed but could not speak against policy imposed from above. “From that moment on,” Ivanov told us, “our task moved into a new stage—to reduce the possible damage from the war and to move on to a political settlement as soon as possible.”24

Publicly, Putin was still keeping his cards close to his vest. The day after Powell’s presentation, the Russian president spoke by telephone with President Jacques Chirac of France and arranged to come see him. A few days later, he left Moscow, stopping first in Berlin to consult with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who put heavy pressure on Putin to join him and Chirac in vocally opposing the war. Schröder “begged him to support the European position,” Sergei Karaganov, the foreign policy analyst who advised the Kremlin, recalled later. “He said, ‘Vladimir, if you are a friend, help.’” Putin then flew on to Paris, where Chirac arranged for a welcome perhaps unseen for any Russian leader since Tsar Aleksandr I’s triumphant visit following the defeat of Napoleon. “The president laid out unbelievable hospitality,” Karaganov said. “I mean, they closed half of Paris and laid out carpets on the streets.” Chirac personally greeted Putin at Orly airport and led him in a motorcade down the Champs-Élysées, lined with French and Russian flags, for a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. The Franco-German seduction was working on Putin. “Gradually, under the positive and negative pressure, he moved a lot closer to the European position,” Karaganov said. “He started off closer to the Chinese position—no, but a quiet no. But then he was really wooed by his European friends. It was unbelievable. He started to repeat things we hadn’t said in two or three years, about a multipolar world and all that. The position was, is, and will be we don’t want to confront the United States over this. But we were dragged into it by the Europeans.

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